The deflation of the Silverdome’s roof might not have been a planned event, Pontiac’s building director said Friday.

“I was told there was a small tear that kept the fans from being able to keep up with the air necessary to keep the roof inflated,” said Pontiac Building Director Jeff Bowdell, of the firm Wade Trim, the city’s contractor for building department services.

Bowdell heard that the roof had come down and went to the Silverdome on Thursday afternoon to perform an inspection, he said.

“If it was allowed to fill with ice and snow, the weight would rip every panel in the roof,” Bowdell said of the deflated roof, which he said is still about 75 feet above the arena floor at its lowest point.

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The building department’s directive is that no one is to be in the arena unless they are there repairing the roof, Bowdell said, and that repair or replacement “may need permits, because we don’t know what they’re doing yet,” he said.

The tear was described as being on the north side of the Silverdome and very near the edge of the roof, Bowdell said.

When reached for comment Friday, a Silverdome staff member said the roof was taken down intentionally.

“All I know is that it’s part of our plan for the 2013 renovations, and they shut the fans off to control the roof coming down,” said events coordinator Alex Loewy.

“I know for sure we did purposely take it down,” he said.

On Thursday, Loewy said the 23 fans holding up the roof were turned off one by one beginning at about 7 p.m. Wednesday, and that the roof had completely deflated by Thursday.

The Silverdome’s ownership plans to begin renovations in the spring or early summer, Loewy said, and could take up to a year.

After the renovation is complete, the Silverdome will have a hard roof not supported by air, and will include solar panels to help make the stadium a “green” facility.

The Silverdome was auctioned in November 2009 by then-Emergency Financial Manager Fred Leeb to Andreas Apostolopoulos of the Canada-based Triple investment Group LLC for $583,000.

The stadium was completed in 1975 at a cost of $55 million.

Prior to Leeb’s appointment as Pontiac’s emergency financial manager, bids for the stadium of more than $20 million by two groups of developers — led by Schostak Brothers and Etkins Equities — were not accepted by the Pontiac City Council.

In March 2012, Emergency Financial Manager Lou Schimmel denied a request by Triple Investment Group LLC for a tax abatement for the Silverdome.

Schimmel said he was expecting “a multi-million dollar plan, and it ended up being sort of routine maintenance.”

This past fall, the Silverdome was listed as one of eight possible new casino sites in a ballot proposal initiative by Citizens for More Michigan Jobs to expand casino gambling in Michigan.

Leeb, the city’s former emergency financial manager, was part of Jobs First LLC, the coalition behind the ballot proposal.

The proposal failed to win approval for the November ballot from the State Board of Canvassers.

The 80,000-seat Silverdome was the home of the Detroit Lions from 1975 until January 6, 2002, when the team played its final game in Pontiac against the Dallas Cowboys before moving to Ford Field in Detroit.